Day 18 : Irony & Sarcasm

Today, a friend of mine, whose native language is not English, asked me the difference between Irony & Sarcasm.

It started like this:

Mr X:
....and I have bought 2 lollipops like the ones in weeds, but still not tried :-P
they had everything there... cookies made with it, flavoured beer and spirits
Me:
oooooooooh
nice nice
very cool
Mr X:
ahah,are you ironic?
:-D
Me:
haha nooo ... !
and the word is sarcastic !
ironic is not correct
u have to say sarcastic
Mr X:
heheh... then what is ironic?

.... and this put me in a fix. 'Ironic' didn't seem right & I didn't know why.

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Excerpt from Dictionary.com :

Irony differs from sarcasm in greater subtlety and wit. In sarcasm ridicule or mockery is used harshly, often crudely and contemptuously, for destructive purposes. It may be used in an indirect manner, and have the form of irony, as in “What a fine musician you turned out to be!” or it may be used in the form of a direct statement, “You couldn't play one piece correctly if you had two assistants.”

The distinctive quality of sarcasm is present in the spoken word and manifested chiefly by vocal inflection, whereas satire and irony, arising originally as literary and rhetorical forms, are exhibited in the organization or structuring of either language or literary material.

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.... well ... now I know ! :-)